The process of manufacturing semiconductor devices involves several steps whereby an integrated circuit chip is bonded to a foil-type lead frame and encapsulated in epoxy or other moulded resin. The lead frame comprises of a plurality of leads etched or stamped out of a thin metallic foil sheet, and the inner ends of the leads are usually bonded to the solder bumps of the integrated circuit chip by a thermal compression method. The chip is then encapsulated in plastic by a transfer moulding process that results in a chip package having the outer ends of the leads expose to the outside for connection to a circuit board.
In a typical prior art system for bonding and encapsulating integrated circuits, a plurality of such circuits is linearly arranged in a single workpiece, which contains a series of identical lead frames etched or stamped on a strip of metallic substrate. A chip is bonded to each of the pre-manufactured lead frames and they are loaded to a bottom mould with the number of lead frames in a single batch being determined by the mould size and the capacity of the moulding equipment being used. A top mould is moved into place atop the bottom mould and some means is provided within the moulding equipment to heat the moulds to a proper moulding temperature, and to subsequently cool them for curing purposes. The heated moulds are clamped together by the moulding equipment and when the temperature is right, usually at approximately 175° C., the moulding material such as epoxy in pellet form is placed in the mould set through pots formed either in the top or bottom mould. Plungers are then inserted into the pots of the mould and a pressurizing force is applied to the plungers. The combination of the pressurizing force and the heat causes the epoxy pellets to liquefy and flow into cavities provided in the mould set, which determines the configuration and the location of the moulded plastic that encapsulate the integrated circuits. Upon completion of this step, the mould set is cooled to induce curing to the epoxy, then the plungers are pulled from the mould set, the mould set is unclamped, and the top mould is lifted from the bottom mould. The lead frames are then removed from the bottom mould and the next station may be trimming, forming, sawing and otherwise operations on them to finish fabrication of the electronic circuit packages. Typically the outer leads of each package need to be bent (formed) to conform to requirements of the printed circuit board for which they are designed.
Delamination, that is separation of the metal lead frame from the moulded epoxy has been reported to happen during handling of the MLP. This is undesirable as it will cause damage and thus render the MLP a reject.
The moulding step also subjects the lead frame to tremendous structural stresses caused by the difference in expansion and compression of the moulded metallic foil that the lead frame and the unmoulded metallic foil that is its outer periphery. This causes bending, waving and twisting of the leads, resulting in delamination of the leads or separation of the metallic lead frame and the epoxy which will results in reliability failure of the package.
Therefore there exists a need for an improved lead frame design that may eliminate delamination problem as mentioned above.